Who put 401k to cash today?

It might seem dumb, but who knows how much lower it is going to go? It may continue to go down for a couple of years until this mess to work out.

I nibbled on some GE today at 19.80. Once I smell capitulation I’m going all in for the “bear market” rally. In the last half hour I thought I was seeing full-blown capitulation, but the last 10min action left me unconvinced. I hope tomorrow morning full-blown capitulation happens and we end the day way off intraday lows. We’ll see. I hope we don’t continue crashing.

gremlin, what standard do you use to distinguish a complete capitulation from a faux-capitulation? Or is it just a gut feel?

A complete capitulation to me is a free-fall where no bids are seen and you get the feel that the indices are about to collapse. All this week the selling has been heavy, but not to a point where extreme fear was present. For example, today during the last half hour the indexes where in free fall but only until 3:50pm, and all of a sudden buying pressure comes in and takes the Dow from -680 to -560 and then back to -650. Full-blown capitulation would have been relentless and indiscriminate selling into the closing bell with the down off 750+. It could be the capitulation every technician was looking for but I’m not convinced based on the last 10min.

i think this is only going to be a short term bottom. i think there’s serious damage already done to the real economy - and the deleveraging will continue unabated for quite some time.